


but that lost home

by andibeth82



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Identity Issues, Natasha Needs a Hug, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1474015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why are you doing this?”</p><p>Clint shrugs, moving one hand over the steering wheel and onto her leg.</p><p>“You took me off the grid once when I needed it,” he says, not looking in her direction. “Now it’s time for me to return the favor.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	but that lost home

**Author's Note:**

> ...the immigrant,
> 
> ever alone,  
> and alone knowing,
> 
> that no place exists,
> 
> but that lost home.  
> \- The Immigrant, Afzall Moolla
> 
>  
> 
> -Thanks to [bobsesive](bobsessive.tumblr.com) for beta (always, always, always my constant) and [enigma731](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731) for support and thinky/ranty thoughts.

After she visits Steve in the hospital and makes sure that he’s okay ( _going_ to be okay), after the hearings are done, after the camera flashes have stopped and the phones have been destroyed and the IDs have been burned and the papers have been shredded, Natasha gets in her car with only two destinations in mind.

The first is the Library of Congress, where she uses the last of her old intel and connections to pick up a file that she’s had recovered on one James Buchanan Barnes. It’s something she probably wouldn’t have done a month ago, or maybe even a week ago, and if she _had_ done it, then it would’ve been because she was ordered to. Now, though, she does it because she wants to, because she owes him, because he saved her life and because it’s time to help save his.

The second is the small apartment she’s kept in Alexandria courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D. ( _no, there is no more S.H.I.E.L.D._ ). She washes the last of the dishes that have piled up in the wake of her days on the run and unearths a packed bag from underneath her bed. Closing the door behind her, she throws the key into the trash chute at the end of the hall and heads to the bus station, picking a bench on the corner and pulling the folds of her hoodie tight around the curve of her face.

He arrives slightly later than he initially had planned, apologizes as she pulls open the door – traffic was bad, rerouted along the Potomac, the tank needed gas. She slides in and doesn’t speak until they’ve left D.C. miles in their wake, eyeing him warily from the passenger seat.

“Why are you doing this?”

Clint shrugs, moving one hand over the steering wheel and onto her leg.

“You took me off the grid once when I needed it,” he says, not looking in her direction. “Now it’s time for me to return the favor.”

 

***

 

_She is sex. She is fantasy. She is fear. She is death._

_She is Natasha Romanov, Natalia Alianovna, Soviet born in 1984 and serving a country drenched in blood, blood, blood._

_She is a machine; she is a killer._

_She is, she is…_

_She doesn’t know._

 

***

 

They stop at the first motel that has vacancy, a run down Holiday Inn on the border of Pennsylvania that looks as though it’s seen better days. _It fits_ , she thinks sullenly, feeling that some over-expensive hotel with plush cushions and room service would be more awkward than comforting.

He’s got three months worth of a full, grizzly beard that makes him look strange, more like a homeless mountain man than a polished marksman. She’s got a year’s worth of stories and some joints that still don’t bend properly thanks to a few close calls. They both have scores of moments in their lives that they won’t get back because they never knew what they were fighting for in the first place.

He waits until she’s showered and undressed and then redressed before starting their wound inventory, and after so many months, it feels strange to do it in person rather than over email or text message.

“Bruised wrist, cut on my leg. Not deep enough for stitches,” he adds before she can ask, wincing slightly. “Guys got the jump on me and I couldn’t get to my bow. It’ll heal, anyway. You?”

She shrugs, trying to keep her tone light. “Bruised ribs from the explosion, but Rogers took the brunt of the force. Minor concussion. Couple of burns on my legs, nothing terrible, though. And a pulled muscle in my lower back.”

Clint raises an eyebrow, searching her face as she talks. “Is that all?”

Natasha sighs, tugging her shirt sideways just enough so that he can see the gauze still covering her shoulder, and beneath that, the scarred skin that’s baked red and golden brown.

“Jesus,” Clint mutters, immediately moving closer, sitting down next to her on the bed. He brushes his fingers over the mutilated skin, his soft touch causing her to shiver. “What happened?”

“Rogue bullet,” she replies tonelessly. “Well, not exactly rogue, but I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, so…machine gun, meet flesh.” She smiles sardonically. “At least I get to draw a Soviet-inspired line from my shoulder to my stomach, now.”

Clint moves his thumb around the edge of the scar. “Are you okay?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Of course I’m okay,” she replies dryly, letting her shirt fall back to cover the injury. “It takes more than a gunshot wound to kill me.”

It’s not what he meant, and she knows it. She watches him push a hand through his hair, and can see his mouth working around the question he doesn’t quite know how to ask.

“So what now?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

“It wasn’t two years ago,” he responds quietly, a memory that stings her heart. She looks down.

“I don’t know,” she admits truthfully, feeling as emotionally tired as she felt when she sat in Sam’s house with Steve, after very nearly dying for the second time in their history together. Natasha raises her eyes, allowing him to see the stark vulnerability in her pupils. “Like I said: I blew all of my covers.”

Clint moves his mouth into a straight line and pulls her gently into his lap, being careful to avoid the injury on her shoulder. He bows his head, his lips closing around the silver chain of the arrow necklace.

“Not all of them.”

 

***

 

With the events of the past few days, with the fact that they don’t even have _jobs_ anymore, they don’t really need to live their life in secrecy. But it’s a habit they can’t seem to break, and so out come the hoodies and on go the sunglasses. They check into motels under his name and hop around where they can, never bothering to stay in one place for more than two nights at a time and it’s a familiarity that reminds her of their first few months at S.H.I.E.L.D. when they toiled around hiding behind fronts and names and faces.

There’s familiarity in the way they reconnect, too, the same way they used to after being apart on missions, no matter how close either of them had been to possibly not coming home at all.

“Remember when I was brainwashed?” he asks as his fingers dig into her thigh, as his cock pushes into her body with vicious force, hard and angry.

“Remember when I almost died?” she cuts back, her hands in his hair, because this is how it is and how it has always been and when he explores her body, it _hurts_ and it’s painful and she _feels_.

“I had to be sure,” he says later, as if he feels like he needs to apologize, as if she doesn’t _know_ , doesn’t get it, and she looks over from where she’s curled up on the bed. There are angry track marks where his nails have found purchase in her skin, and fading bruises from the weeks past, and she watches as his eyes mentally catalog them all in a file of sorts that he stores away in the back of his brain.

“I know you did,” she says simply, reaching for his hand.

 

***

 

Because really, it’s not so much about remembering as it’s about _reconnecting_.

She has his nightmares, the ones that haven’t really gone away but that he’s gotten better at adapting to. Still, there are too many nights when clammy hands meet cold fingers, and it’s easier to not talk as they hold each other, silently clinging to the one constant anchor they know they have in the sea of a world that has given them nothing but pain and disorder and mistrust.

_“Tell me who you are.”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Look at me and tell me who you are.”_

She’s been S.H.I.E.L.D.’s for so long that she thinks she forgets she was ever anyone else’s, not until he touches her neck, a token reminder of _I am yours_.

She was always his, before she was anyone else’s, before she was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s and Fury’s and Hill’s and the world’s.

She needs to remember that, now.

 

***

 

And here’s the problem: that’s a hard thing to focus on, even when he’s here and back and things are kind of like they once were, because the events of a few days ago are still too fresh in her mind to try to think objectively and logically. It doesn’t go unnoticed, and she’s not surprised.

“What’s wrong?” he asks after they’ve ordered breakfast, tucking themselves into a corner booth of a local diner, and he can see the fear she’s trying to quell.

“They know everything now,” she says quietly from behind the walls of her striped hoodie, the one that’s a little too frumpy but otherwise slightly endearing. “Not just my past, but…everything.” She digs her spoon a little deeper into the bland cup of yogurt as she drops her eyes and Clint quirks a smile in response.

“Come on, Nat,” he chides. “You think S.H.I.E.L.D. really cared about listing relationship statuses on our records?”

“ _Everything_ ,” she repeats pointedly, giving him a hard look and he finally understands, the realization dawning on him, pain spreading through his insides, as cold as the hands that once took over his brain. Clint grunts, shoving his napkin across the table.

“Well. Fuck that.”

 

***

 

In Cleveland, they find a park with a small lake where parents help children set small plastic boats on the water, another reminder of the normalcy that exists in a world where people stop realizing that everything just went to shit because they can just _ignore_. They sit on the grass, back-to-chest, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, and for some reason, it’s the first place she feels like she can finally talk even though they’re more out in the open than they’ve ever been.

“When we had to take down the carriers, they sent up Rogers, for obvious reasons. I was better on the ground, so I don’t know exactly what happened.” She feels herself falter before she pauses, placing her chin on her knees. “But I do know that the Winter Soldier was up there with him.”

Clint frowns, working his fingers through tangled red curls. “You said that he knew him.”

“His best friend,” Natasha replies slowly. “Or at least, he was. Before Hydra got to him.”

“So he was changed?” Clint asks, his hands moving to thumb the curve of her cheek. Natasha sighs, wondering first how he could miss the unsaid words and then if his ignorance is intentional.

“He was compromised.”

She looks up, then, watching for how close the sentence hits home, for the unearthing of a memory buried just below the surface of what’s considered acceptable forgetfulness after so long. He says nothing, however, tightening his hands around her body in a way that if she didn’t know any better would seem overly possessive.

“Did he kill him?” Clint asks. Natasha shakes her head.

“He couldn’t,” she returns quietly. “Because no matter what had happened…he was still his best friend.”

“Well. That sucks,” Clint mutters with a level of detachment that seems almost foreign. Natasha leans back against his chest, her eyes finding the sky.

“I know it’s still there,” she says when she speaks again. “And I know it never really leveled out.”

Clint ignores her, choosing to continue the conversation rather than give in to her prodding. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him…” Natasha stops, closing her eyes. “I told him it wasn’t his fault. I don’t think that’s what he wanted to hear, but there was nothing he _could_ do, Clint.” She swallows. “He was his mission.”

She feels him tense against her as she curls one arm around his waist, feels the soft exhale of his chest as he pushes out air, the stubble of his beard rough against her skin.

“You were my mission once, too.”

 

***

 

Reno, Nevada has a population of about 225,000 and that’s where she finally breaks, throwing punches into the bathroom door so hard that it comes right off its hinges and causes Clint to issue a rather apologetic phone call to the front desk about why they suddenly have to switch rooms.

“You gonna be okay? Or do I need to find us a bunker?” he asks with a sigh as he tapes two of her fingers together. She snorts quietly in the resulting silence.

“What, are you worried I can’t control myself in public? Hate to tell you, Barton, but you’re about ten years too late with that realization.”

Clint finishes bandaging her hands and sits back on the bed. “You wanna punch something? Take it all out? Do it on me, Tash. I’m already beat up enough for the two of us.”

She looks at him with eyes that she knows look as tired as she feels and he immediately knows what she won’t bother to say – _I can’t, I won’t, I don’t want to subject you to that. It’s not fair; it’s not your fight_. She’ll nod though, keep the words to herself, lie back on the bed with a questioning look that he doesn’t need to ask about and he’ll get into bed with her and they’ll fuck each other until their bodies are as raw as their emotions.

And then later, when she does lose it, she’ll take him up on the offer she’s silently refused and apologize and he won’t tell her that she was wrong, but instead that she can do it anytime she needs to.

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

 

***

 

“I don’t know who to be,” she admits when they’re driving to yet another nameless location and she’s staring at a list she’s written out in the car, all her names and aliases bleeding across the cheap hotel notepad like an open wound. Clint leans his head back against the seat.

“Be you,” he says gently. “Be with me. Be Natasha.”

“I don’t even know who that is,” she says, staring down at words on the page, Natasha who was really Natalia who was really Natalie who was really no one. Clint lets the silence stretch as they zip past another road sign, another exit lane, another barren expanse of land.

“Natasha likes car trips, but she hates when she’s told that she can’t control the radio,” he says suddenly in a tone that's so conversational, they could be discussing their favorite movies. She looks over in surprise as he continues. “She also likes it when you open the window, but if it messes with her hair, she gets aggravated. Everyone thinks she wants to dress professional all the time, but her favorite thing to wear when she’s not working is an old pair of yoga pants. And she absolutely hates when someone makes her coffee the wrong way; she’ll bitch about it for days…”

Natasha turns her head as he talks, her eyes taking in the scenery of a landscape rushing past, an open road ahead that leads to nowhere, a path seemingly as endless as the one she knows she needs to take towards figuring out who she is and what she is, if she wants to be anything at all.

_I am yours._

She is his. In this car, in this life, in this world, she is his.

And it is enough, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this pretty much the morning after I saw Winter Soldier for the first time. Halfway through, my brain took another track entirely in terms of inspiration...but while I tackle that monster of an idea into a reality, I also didn't want to abandon this one completely. I really loved digging into the concept of Clint taking Natasha off the grid - no questions asked - because he would just know to come back from wherever he was. Because he knew she would need him. (And let's be honest, being able to address the parallel of Bucky and Clint's situation, however brief, was something I couldn't pass up.)


End file.
